


Count to Ten

by Smontheye



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Minho Is a Bit of an Asshole, Post-The Death Cure, Pre-Thomas Era, Protectiveness, Suicide Attempt, The Death Cure Spoilers, The Maze Runner Spoilers, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:09:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4402076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smontheye/pseuds/Smontheye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fate had dealt Gally a shitty hand, and he was okay with that. What he couldn’t handle, what tore him up like a broken contract, was that Newt had to be there too. Well, there was a reason tragedies seem so much more beautiful.</p><p>(In which Gally and Newt do everything except fall in love.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count to Ten

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, I wasn’t a big Gally fan when I read the books, but Will Poulter’s awesome acting and some really fantastic nally drabbles on Tumblr have changed me. Plus, I ship Newt with everybody. Just a warning, this fic contains a shit-ton of angst. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!

1.

Gally straightened up, threw his ax down so that it lodged blade-first into the grass, and brushed his hand across the sweat gathering on his brow.

The stump’s thick roots clung stubbornly in the ground, refusing to budge despite the entire day Gally had devoted to removing it.  On the opposite end of the dirt field, his Builders were hammering, measuring, and cutting, a rhythmic chorus that would have been soothing if the tumult in Gally’s mind didn’t drown it out.

 _Recovered from the Changing, my ass_ , he thought.

Besides the scar from being pricked—no, _stabbed_ —by that goddamned Griever, there weren’t any physical signs that Gally had spent the past week tied down in the Homestead, writhing and screaming like he was being burned alive.

Gally took a seat on the flat top of the stump and curled forward, elbows on his knees. He dug the heel of his palm into his eyelids, trying to squash out the images of white and blue that flooded his brain like an overly realistic horror movie.

When the pressure of his hand caused spots to start dancing across the black of his shuttered vision, Gally blinked his eyes open and tilted his head up.

Black was replaced by gold as he made out a lean figure approaching him. The fairness of the boy’s skin, hair, and clothes was broken up only by the dark leather of a Runner’s harness.

“You okay, Gally?” Newt’s brows were scrunched in concern. There was a fragile innocence in the way Newt tilted his head to the side and seemed to waffle over whether to get closer to Gally or give him space.

“What do you think, slinthead?” Gally responded with reflexive hostility. To Gally’s surprise, Newt didn’t flinch away, lose interest, or reciprocate his anger. Instead, the older boy’s wide, brown eyes watched Gally steadily.

“I can tell Alby to give you a break,” the Runner answered. “You must be bloody tired.” His tone was clinical enough to suggest there was no shame in resting and sympathetic enough to make anyone who wasn’t Gally think they were friends.

 _Get the hell away_ , his mind cried, though he wasn’t sure whether it was more directed at Newt or himself.

“Mind your own shucking business,” Gally replied coldly. The other boy wasn’t deterred by his chilliness.

“You’re my business.” Newt grinned as if he had just uttered an inside joke. He took a seat on a nearby rock, one that Gally knew he would have to go through hell to move out of the way of construction later. Gally scowled at Newt’s apparent determination to disrupt his work.

“Yeah? And why is that?”

“You’re…Changed, but you’re still a Glader.” Newt answered gently. The warmth in the Runner’s brown eyes made Gally surprised rainbows weren’t erupting from Newt’s ears. “We’re a family.”

A leather-wrapped hand touched his shoulder, and Gally tensed at the contact.

 _Yeah_ , Gally thought _, and you’re still the best at pretending everything’s alright._

* * *

2.

The world tilted and spun as if it was sitting on a spinning top, and Gally didn’t mind. The dying fire the drowsy Gladers encircled felt like it was simmering warmly inside him. The voices of the past that appeared in his mind during the Changing and hadn’t shut up since were muted for once.

Gally sat away from the Builders, who were engaging in their usual alcohol-wreathed wrestling. Before, he would have joined them, but the antics seemed childish and trivial now. Aloof in his spot uphill, he watched Minho pluck the drink out of Newt’s grasp and smirk at the blond boy’s protests.

Even against the dim, flickering light of the fire, Newt’s face looked red. He made a clumsy lunge for the confiscated jar of golden liquid, but Minho held it away.

Newt pouted, shot the other boy a glare, and shook his head as if to clear it. The movement caused Newt’s gaze to connect with Gally’s.

_Shit…_

He knew he was caught, so he didn’t look away.

Newt seemed to accept that as a challenge. The Runner said something to Minho and wove towards Gally with surprising agility through the clusters of boys in various stages of inebriation and sleep.

“You look lonely,” Newt announced, taking a seat beside him. Gally snorted.

“If girls still exist, I hope you never use that line on one.”

“Of course they still bloody exist,” the boy beside him slurred, and Gally held back a chuckle. It was clear who the more drunken one was. “We were born, right?”

Since Newt’s flirtatiousness was apparently infectious, Gally tapped him gently on the temple. “I’ll believe you when you remember one, test tube baby.”

“Why don’t _you_ tell _me_ , slinthead?” Newt turned to look at him, and Gally was surprised by how close their faces were. He could feel Newt’s overly warm breath feather against his lips. “You remember way bloody more than the rest of us.”

Gally froze. A sudden coldness in his chest drove out the anesthetizing heat of the alcohol. The voices tugged at the edges of his mind, ripping and cracking the dam he had so carefully formed to block them out.

Newt seemed to realize the repercussions of what he had said. “God, Gally, I’m so sorry…”

“Shut your hole, shank,” Gally answered without any real heat. For a reason he was unwilling to think about, he didn’t want Newt to leave him. Gally reminded himself he was drunk and hadn’t spoken more than a few words at a time to anyone since the Changing.

_So I’m secretly needy…what else is new?_

The Runner looked relieved at the forgiveness and shot Gally a sunny grin.

“You’re good, Gally,” Newt informed him before resting his head heavily on Gally’s shoulder. He took on a philosophical tone. “They’re afraid of you because they don’t understand.”

“Does that mean _you_ understand, slinthead?” In any other situation, Gally would have reacted violently, blown up somehow at the mention of how the other Gladers watched him like he was a ticking time bomb and Greenies avoided him like a plague. In the haze of alcohol and Newt’s presence, he gently jostled his shoulder instead, dislodging the boy’s golden head.

A strange look appeared on Newt’s face.

“I guess I don’t,” Newt muttered. His brown gaze examined him, close enough for Gally to notice hazel flecks dotting his irises.

Something burning flashed through those mesmerizing eyes.

Then, Newt’s lips crashed clumsily into Gally’s—soft, sweet, and inexperienced. Gally tensed in alarm, but Newt didn’t seem deterred by the lack of reciprocation.

He tasted bitter and heady, like the drink Minho snatched away.

Gally’s hormones must have been in working order where his mind wasn’t, because he eventually licked the line of Newt’s lips, which parted immediately. The other boy’s tongue met his, and the touch blazed like lightning, slick and suggestive of a coming storm.

Newt reached up and grasped Gally’s jaw, pulling them closer.

Gally heard Minho’s laugh and pulled away from Newt as if burned. He twisted his head to the source of the sound to find Minho’s head turned away. Minho was surrounded by the Runners, and the Runners were surrounded by a glow of camaraderie that made Gally cold.

_Damn it…_

The boy in his arms let out a sound of protest and tried to restart the kiss. Gally shoved him away.

“Give it a rest, shank.”

Newt shot Gally an annoyed glare before seeming to recognize the rejection. His expression fell into a fragile mask, and Gally viciously shoved away the toxic mixture of lust and guilt that flooded his gut. If he wasn’t already a sick bastard for suddenly wanting Newt, he definitely earned the title now by finding the boy’s vulnerability arousing.

“Go to bed,” Gally said, surprising himself with the gentleness of his tone. He stood up to leave but gave into the temptation lean back down to press a chaste kiss to Newt’s forehead. The skin was slightly salty. He wanted more.

_I’m definitely fucking drunk._

At least Gally left Newt with a smile on his face.

* * *

3.

Gally surveyed the Map Room, cataloging the damage.

“I can’t wait to eat that goat for dinner,” he finally commented, squatting to examine the splintered remains of what was formerly the large table the Runners drew their maps on. It was the last and most damaged stop on the animal’s trail of disaster before Ben had wrestled the fugitive goat to the ground in a flurry of curses and bleating.

From where he stood leaning against the wall, veined arms crossed over his broad chest, Minho snorted. It was a sound of grudging amusement.

“Seriously, how did it even get in?” Gally resisted the urge to rub his temples. Something stupid and antagonistic made him unwilling to show weakness around Minho.

“Ask Winston,” Minho shrugged. His voice was a mix of blasé, condescending, and snarky that suddenly infuriated Gally. “So can you fix it?”

“I guess I have to, or your Runners will be drawing in the dirt,” Gally sneered.

“Just do what you can.” Minho growled, his voice in stark contradiction to his relaxed posture.  With a lithe movement, the other boy swayed into the doorway, ready to leave Gally to clean up the mess. 

“What’s your problem with me?” Gally demanded, despite his instincts shouting at him to let it go, to cut and run. Or, in this case, let Minho run.

 _Yeah, keep on pretending_ he’s _the cowardly one here…_

Minho paused, one hand on the frame of the door and face tilted at the minimum angle necessary to maintain eye contact. Despite this, Gally felt like an insect pinned in the boy’s dark eyes. Minho had the same x-ray vision as Newt, the same ability to see through people’s facades and judge their worth.

“Well, slinthead?” He prompted. Unlike Newt’s, the other boy’s gaze held no warm sympathy, just cool disregard. With Minho, Gally only ever felt exposed.

“I can’t stand selfish assholes.”

Before Gally could pull a biting retort out of his poorly organized mind, the metal safe-like door of the Map Room slammed shut, and he was left alone with the splintered shards of his denial for company.

* * *

4.

Newt’s Runner’s harness was the first article to be discarded carelessly on the floor.

It thudded against the dirt floor of the Builders’ shed and caused a shock of dust to billow up, though neither boy noticed.

“Bloody hell, you’re strong,” Newt gasped against his lips as Gally effortlessly picked him up by the thighs and placed him on the worktable. Once Newt sat securely on the sanded wooden surface, he plunged his tongue back into Gally’s mouth. Gally felt Newt’s heels press into the backs of his thighs, urging him closer in between the Runner’s knees.

“Shuck,” Gally groaned, feeling like his body was on fire. “Oh, fuck.” Newt pulled away to smirk wickedly at him. Gally felt clever fingers at the zipper of his pants.

At the time, Gally knew already. The next few moments would be seared into Gally’s brain like scar tissue for the rest of his life.

Moving with impressive dexterity, Newt freed them both of their clothing. Gally moaned Newt’s name over and over again like a broken record as the other boy reached slender fingers around his cock.

After the Changing, Gally had almost forgotten what lust was like. Now, Newt’s touches burned through the ice that had formed around his heart and mind, lighting his nerves in a blaze.

“C’mon,” Newt urged, tugging deliciously at Gally’s erection when he was slow to respond. Gally’s eyes widened when he realized where Newt’s other hand was.

“Hell…” The long, slender fingers, dripping with something slippery, were buried deep into the blond boy’s hole, stretching and preparing for what was to come.

“C’mon,” Newt repeated, brushing hot kisses across Gally’s face and neck. “It’s just biology…”

_Biology…_

Gally supposed he should be used to his body betraying him by now.

Which was why he capitulated to the chemical urge, why he eventually plunged into Newt’s pliant, willing body, savoring the slickness and warmth like an addict. It was terrifying and exhilarating to let free this rough, animal side of him, one that had been dormant since he could remember.

He moaned in satisfaction when Newt shifted his hips to meet Gally’s thrusts, clutching his neck like a lifeline.

Heat crashed between them like an overdue tidal wave—natural, inevitable, and deadly. Gally had thought he was incapable of feeling anything so intense.

It wasn’t long before he climaxed into Newt. For a few moments, he savored the sense of wholeness and completion. Then, he reached between them and closed his fingers around Newt’s, which were wrapped around the other boy’s erection.

Newt groaned in protest when Gally dragged their hands away, halting his path to release. However, he submitted when Gally maneuvered him off the table, turned him around, and bent him over the edge of the wood. The lean muscles in Newt’s back pulled and flexed, and the sight returned his arousal almost instantaneously.

Gally pressed into Newt again. He fucked into the slick tightness from behind, where he could feather bites and kisses across Newt’s nape and the graceful lines of his shoulder blades.

They came simultaneously the second time, and Gally memorized the precious, rare, and fragile feeling of lightness and bliss.

* * *

5.

“What’s wrong?” Newt asked gently over his plate of chicken, brown eyes flickering with concern Gally didn’t deserve. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Whatever it is you want, I can’t give it to you.” Gally made no effort to hide the bitterness in his voice. The blond boy needed to get the hell away from him, before the broken shards of Gally’s psyche cut Newt up and bled him out. “I can’t… smile at you and bring you flowers and shit. I don’t have anything. You’re better off without me.” Minho’s words echoed in his mind.

_I can’t stand selfish assholes._

But Newt didn’t seem to mind, if the open, solicitous tilt of his head was any indication.

“When you really love something, then it will love you back, in whatever way it has to love.”

Gally choked out a laugh. “What’s that, Shakespeare?”

Newt chewed his piece of chicken slowly, eyebrows furrowing as he traced the thread of memory unsuccessfully for an origin. “I don’t remember.”

“Well, Shakespeare never saw a Griever.” Gally husked, voice cracking with a sudden hollowness that he didn’t want to confront. “We don’t live in a book, slinthead. Not everyone gets a happy ending.”

“Romeo and Juliet didn’t have a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t love each other,” Newt replied with a naivety that caused Gally’s stomach to roll with disgust.

“You think this is love?” He gestured incredulously between them.

“I don’t know what it is, Gally,” Newt sighed, and that horrible, defeated look seeped across his face again. Gally wanted to hold him and summon the words that would wipe it away. Instead, he remained frozen and tense under Newt’s gaze. “I’m not even sure if I still want to find out.”

* * *

6.

“Guess you’re not the only shank with head issues…” Newt tried to smile from where he was confined to one of the Glade’s few pathetic excuses for a bed.

Gally didn’t move from the doorway. He hovered, neither in the room nor out of it.

“What you did was shucking weak, Newt,” Gally answered, not making an iota of effort to pretend Newt broke his leg in some sort of accident. “I don’t care what the hell you were thinking because whatever it was, it was stupid.”

“But you’re glad I’m alive.” The words held a flirtatious edge that made Gally feel nauseous. Still, he was impressed by how calm Newt sounded despite the redness of his eyes, which hinted at the immense pain he must have been in, physical and psychological.

“You’re a coward, Newt,” Gally said, and Newt didn’t flinch.

“Old shuckin’ news. Does this mean you’ll stop avoiding me?”

“Fuck you,” Gally replied when he really wanted to say, _I’m sorry._

_None of us deserved this, least of all you._

Instead waiting for an answer, Gally turned on his heel and escaped the Homestead.

* * *

7.

Newt’s voice floated across the field, quiet but full of conviction.

“Gally saved your life back there, you know?” The second-in-command told the Greenie, though it was clear to Gally from his tone Newt admired the boy he was talking to heaps more than the one he was talking about.

The Keeper of the Builders couldn’t help snorting loudly. That sentence was full of pathos, so patently Newt that it managed to tear open old wounds and send a jolt of pain and longing through his spine.

Thomas’s gaze darted over, narrowed in stubborn suspicion. Gally scoffed in his direction. If the kid was going to be quick to judge, who was he to stop him?

_If I wanted to be the hero, I’d put on a damned cape._

* * *

8.

Gally was destined to be the villain, the monster, the parasite.

That was the only certainty he felt the hours, days, and weeks he spent curled up in a corner of that padded cell, squeezing his eyes shut against the sterile white light. They had poked and prodded him at first, but now he wasn’t needed. He was more useless than a lab rat.

_Worse than useless…_

Chuck’s blood soaked face, frozen by the mask of death in his final terrified moments, haunted Gally like a leering, vengeful specter.

 _It was necessary,_ the nasally voice of a white-clad scientist had rumbled at him through the white noise, _WICKED is good._

“I didn’t mean it—” Gally whimpered to himself, weaving his fingers into his hair and tugging hard. Voices that weren’t his own echoed in his head, commandeering his mind.

_I can’t stand selfish assholes._

The pain in his scalp wasn’t enough, and his skin felt like it was crawling with beetle blades. He kicked the cushioned wall, and the blunt, painless impact only stirred the madness creeping through his mind. The dam of his sanity was in shambles, cracked before the concrete could finish drying.

_They’re afraid of you because they don’t understand._

“Please,” Gally begged the white silence, “I want to—”

_You’re a coward._

Some of his hair came away with his fingers, but Gally didn’t care. It was about time his appearance matched his screwed up mind.

Then, he heard the clink of plastic as the usual bland meal slid through the mail slot opening of the cell door. The sound activated the animal side of him that was always present these days: the instinct to survive even though life sucked.

_It’s just biology…_

Gally drew himself to his feet and limped over to the tray of food.

When he bit into the cardboard-flavored biscuit, his teeth were stopped by the crinkle of paper. His eyes widened, and he pulled away, tucking the piece of bread into the waistband of his sweatpants.

After finishing the rest of the meal quickly and silently, Gally curled into the corner again, facing away from the cameras. He unfolded the paper to find it covered in tiny script.

“We are the Right Arm,” the note began in plain black lettering, “and we want to stop WICKED…”

When he finished committing the note to memory, he swallowed the biscuit whole, paper and all.

_A chance to fix things…_

* * *

9.

“I finally understand,” Newt said. His eyes were half crazed and half sad. He was crouching like a skittish predator on Gally’s dilapidated couch in Apartment 2792 on the corner of Kenwood and Brookshire. “I used to be afraid of you, but now I understand.”

“Not afraid of me?” Gally, perched on an identical couch across from him, raised his eyebrows before speaking bitterly. “Do I need to remind you I killed a boy?”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Newt replied, and Gally had to admire his calm. He had met Cranks more crazed than Newt who had the Flare for less time. Then again, Newt was probably the least Crank-like person Gally had ever met.

_Irony is a bitch…_

“What do you understand, then?” Gally prompted when Newt didn’t continue. One of the symptoms of the Flare was a short attention span.

Newt flinched out of the funk he had receded into. “I understand what it’s like to…to not have control of your mind. How you can feel like a monster. I get why you wanted to stay away from me…stay away from the people you care about.”

The words tugged on a cord of sympathy and pain in Gally that he thought had been severed and shut away. More than ever, he wanted pull Newt into his arms and shut the rest of the world out.

Too bad the contact would likely trigger Newt to claw his face off.

Gally swallowed the urge to coddle and opened his mouth to speak. “And you snuck all the way here to tell me that, shank?”

“No,” Newt suddenly smiled, teeth glinting in the stripes of sunlight let in by the dented blinds. His voice suddenly took on a wicked edge. “I came to say good-bye.”

“Shouldn’t you save that for Thomas and Minho?” Gally quirked up the corners of his mouth to disguise his wariness.

“Not what I have in mind.”

With that, the blond boy pounced on Gally without warning, knocking his breath out. Newt straddled his hips with strong, lean thighs and pushed him back into the couch with a growl.

Soft, chapped lips pressed down onto his, and a clever tongue entered Gally’s mouth when he parted his jaws in surprise. Lust sharpened his senses.

Gally missed this.

He gripped Newt’s waist, grinding up at the same time he chased Newt’s tongue back into the other’s mouth.

The blond boy’s slender, slightly starved body rippled above his, and their erections slotted together through their clothing. He felt Newt’s fingers fumble at the buttons of his threadbare button up shirt and waited for the rush of cool air over his chest when the fabric parted.

It didn’t come.

Gally gasped for air when Newt pulled away. His delicate features and extra prominent cheekbones were marred by a frown. Gally followed Newt’s downcast gaze to find that the other’s fingers, slightly bony and pale, were shaking.

Newt’s eyes, which looked larger than ever now in his thin face, glistened at the corners with tears.

“Hey, hey,” Gally said in alarm, taking the unsteady fingers into his. He couldn’t remember the last time he comforted anyone. In the Glade, that was Newt’s job. “Shh, it’s okay.”

He pulled Newt against his chest and rocked back and forth awkwardly, hoping it was soothing. The other boy’s uneven breaths stuttered against his ear.

“Relax,” Gally murmured, tapping a rhythm into the nape of Newt’s neck, right below where soft golden hairs began. “Breathe…in and out, in and out, in and out…” He counted to ten even sets of inhales and exhales before he let his hands wander lower, where they began to massage the tension out of Newt’s back. Deep breathing had unfailingly made it easier for Gally to get through the worst days after the Changing.

Newt held onto him so tightly it hurt. Gally was sure there would be finger-shaped bruises in his back but didn’t mind because the pain felt like penance.

It didn’t take him long to catalog exhaustion dripping from the slant of Newt’s spine, the unsteadiness of his limps, and the droop his gold-lined eyelids. Adjusting his grip on Newt’s thighs, he stood up easily and carried him to the mattress on the floor.

“Here, take a break,” he stroked the boy’s burning forehead gently before stepping away. The sight of Newt, small, vulnerable, and curled up in the sheets like a shadow of his former self, added fuel to a hatred for WICKED that Gally knew he would carry until he died.

“No, stay with me…”

And since Gally was a pushover when it came to Newt, he stretched out beside him and pulled their bodies together. Sleep, nature’s safe house from reality, covered them like a protective blanket.

When Gally woke up, Newt was gone.

* * *

10.

To Newt, who won many battles but lost the war.

To Newt, a pain in the ass that I miss very much.

To Newt, for finally understanding.

To Newt—

“What are those?” Thomas frowned, peering curiously over Gally’s shoulder at the rows of crossed out words. Gally resisted the urge to elbow him away. Ten years after the Immunes settled in Paradise, Thomas still suffered from some inexplicable residual guilt over what WICKED did to Gally. And since it was Thomas, that guilt translated into an unfailingly annoying desire to be his friend.

“I’m writing the dedication for my book,” Gally replied, covering his increasingly embarrassing and personal ideas with an ink-stained forearm.

“The one about the Gladers, right? The memorial? I thought you finished that.” Thomas scanned the page before letting out an impressed whistle, probably at all the effort Gally had put into perfecting the wording of such a small part of his work.

_Guess Newt was right. I don’t have shit on Shakespeare._

“It’s called a memoir,” Gally corrected. “And, yeah, the rest of it is done. I just need to figure out how to dedicate it.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. “Newt, huh?”

Thomas suddenly wore a strange look on his face, a mixture of profound grief and devastating guilt. The emotion was gone as quickly as it appeared, and Thomas took a seat next to him.  Gally resisted the temptation to prod, to excavate dirt long buried.

 _We’ve all got demons. I’d be surprised if he_ doesn’t _have a Newt-related one._

“Yeah,” Gally replied, and an old understanding hung between the two of them. They could share grief for their friend without talking, without airing the specifics of who Newt was to each.

There was a long pause before Thomas spoke again, voice thoughtful. “You always hated me and Minho. But never Newt, right? Even when he went against you.”

“I haven’t hated you in a long time,” Gally reminded him. It was true. Hate was difficult to cultivate and nearly impossible to maintain. It was a double-edged sword too needlessly destructive and exhausting to wield, and Gally wished he had realized that sooner.

The memoir—well, it was more of a hybrid between an autobiography, a scientific journal, and a history book—was just what he needed. It was a petri dish where he cultivated, examined, and came to terms with the ghosts that followed him to Paradise. The seven hundred page manuscript faced the evils of WICKED and the cruelty of the Flare head on and gave the fracture a clean break. It took three years of writing and research and a lifetime of experience with the delicate dance of emotions and reality for Gally to produce the mammoth volume.

It still hurt—it would always hurt to remember, but it was the closest Gally could ever hope to come to healing.

“Still,” Thomas insisted, “he meant a lot to you. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Gally replied distractedly. “We were kind of close.”

It was something they, even naturally affectionate Newt, had agreed to never verbalize. What did he feel for Newt? Sure, there was bitterness and pain and maybe even a healthy dose of hate. But underneath all that was a powerful driving force, unalienable, eternal, and all-encompassing.

He picked up his pencil and, with a certainty that he never had before regarding that particular volatile cocktail of emotions, wrote it down.

To Newt, whom I will always love.


End file.
